Two years ago my family joined a small group of homeschoolers that participated in a national organization called Stoa. This group hosts speech and debate tournaments all over the United States. Last year, my two older children began participating in those tournaments in the junior category. In fact, yesterday, they participated in a one day tournament in Phoenix. The topics some of these kids and teens cover, amaze me. The thought and research they conduct, and the presentations they give are remarkable.
They wrestle with the questions that philosophers and theologians have debated for centuries, then they give a fully flushed out understanding of it, and either a defense or rebuttal of those ideas. As I was sitting in on one of these speeches, it hit me, these young people were confronting the same topics that some Christian leaders are losing their faith over, and I asked myself, “how can that be?” How can these children and teens articulate an understanding of the topics, their implications, and answer them, when Christian leaders cannot? The thought simply astounded me.
Which brings us to this week in our “No One Talks About it Series,” where we are covering the topics that an ex-Hillsong worship leader by the name of Marty Sampson says are some of the reason he is losing his Christian faith.
The first topic that Sampson brings up, is the fact that preachers fall and no one talks about it. We showed this to be untrue with several examples, both nationally and personally. But what we focused on was the fact that, Scripture tells us people will fall, giving us plenty of examples of it, but the emphasis isn’t on the fall of other people, but rather being personally on guard against falling to temptation. Where Sampson focuses on other people, God desires that we be personally prepared, on guard, and praying for others to not fall.
Then last we week covered Sampson’s focus on how not many miracles happen. From this we saw an acknowledgement by Sampson that miracles do happen, but he desires more of them. The problem that we talked about with this, is the desire to have miracles over a relationship with God. We saw two places in Jesus’ life where, if a person was not interested in a relationship with God, then even the greatest miracle of the resurrection wouldn’t be enough. So we walked away from last week with the understanding that when we demand miracles from God, there will never be enough of them to satisfy us. But when we desire God, we will experience more miracles that we can imagine.
This brings us to Sampson’s third topic of why he is losing his Christian faith. This is what he says, “Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it.”
I have to say, this topic is one my favorite topics that he brings up. Because there is a whole discipline within Christianity that deals with this very topic. That discipline is called textual criticism. The whole bases of textual criticism is to analyze the text to understand what it means. Now, we’re not going to get into all of that here, because I want to jump into some of the more prominent contradictions that are brought up against the Bible, and see if they are truly contradictions.
So, we’re going to cover three contradictions of the Bible that are brought up by people. And to make sure these are real contradictions that are brought up by non-Christians, I’m going to be taking these contradictions from the website, www.atheists.org, which is one of the first non-Cristian websites that is brought up when you google the words, “Contradictions in the Bible.”
On the website’s resource page dealing with Bible contradictions, it says this, “It is a central dogma of all fundamental Christians that the Bible is without error. They teach this conclusion by “reasoning” that god cannot be the author of false meaning and he cannot lie. Is this true? If written by a perfect being, then it must not contradict itself, as a collection of books written by different men at different times over many centuries would be expected to contradict each other.
"With this in mind, let us have a look at the Bible on several subjects.” (https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/)
So let us look at three of the fifteen that are brought up. If you would like to read the other twelve and my response to each, I’ll have that available on the information table in the foyer.
Let’s begin where they begin, the Sabbath Day.
Real quick, for those of you who do not know, the Sabbath Day was officially instituted as a command of God in the Law of Moses in Exodus chapter 20 verse 8. But it has it’s origins in Genesis chapter 2 verse 2, in reference to God’s work in creation. That’s a whole book before, and at the very beginning of the Bible.
On the atheist website it gives two seemingly contradictory verses. The first comes from Exodus 20 verse 8, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The second comes from the New Testament book of Romans chapter 14 verse 5, “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”
The implication of putting these two verses next to each other is to say, how can God make the Sabbath more important than any other day, when later on God says through Paul, that no day is more important than the other.
This is a common practice of not only non-Christians, but of Christians too. We try proof text the Bible, instead of reading the context of the passage. Proof texting is simply picking one verse out of the Bible and creating a theological framework around it. In Romans 14:5, the context is that Paul is dealing with people who are judging each other in Christian practice. The Jewish Christians were saying that people had to worship on Saturday the seventh day of the week, whereas the Gentile Christians began worshiping on Sunday the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Paul is actually referring back to a teaching Jesus that starts in Mark chapter 2 verse 23, where Jesus tells us what the Sabbath is. See the Sabbath is not a specific day to be tied to, but rather a time God set aside for people to worship him and be refreshed.
In Exodus 20:8 were not told that Saturday is the Sabbath, but rather in context we’re told, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”
Did you catch that, you work six days, then the seventh day is the Sabbath. So if you work Monday through Saturday, Sunday is an acceptable day. If you work Sunday through Friday, Saturday is an acceptable Sabbath day. God is not contradicting himself saying the Sabbath should be elevated and then no day is to be elevated. Rather, we’re not to think that you can only have a Sabbath on a particular day, and therefore elevating that day. Instead the we’re to understand that the intention of the Sabbath is for rest and communion with God, and that can happen on any day.
Context is king when we’re trying to understand seemingly contradictions in the Bible, and as we saw here, when we look at the context of each passage, we can see they’re in harmony, and not contradictory.
Let’s move onto another contradiction. This one has to deal with human sacrifice, and is more complicated that most of the others. The website gives two passages. The first one comes from Leviticus chapter 18 verse 21 “… Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God…”
The second passage comes from Judges 11:30-31, “… If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering”
The first passage from Leviticus 18:21 deals with God’s desire that the Israelite people not sacrifice their children as the Canaanite people were doing. It was a horrible practice where a large statue of a human boar hybrid with a furnace in it’s belly would be lit. Then on the outstretched arms of the statue, children would be placed and burned alive, as a sacrifice to the god Molech. God didn’t want child sacrifice.
The second passage from Judges 11:30-31, seems to go against this idea of no child sacrifice, because Jephthah the speaker in the passage, makes a pledge to God that if God gives him the victory in this coming battle, then he will sacrifice whatever meets him when he returns from that battle. When we returns however, it is his daughter that come out first, and so Jephthah ends up sacrificing her.
Here’s the problem with the passage, the language of the passage in Judges is unclear. With some scholars putting forth that he didn’t kill her, but because of the emphasis on her being a virgin later on in the passage, that what actually happen was that he dedicated her to the service of the Lord where she would be unable to marry.
But let’s say, that Jephthah did kill his daughter and sacrificed her to God after the battle was won. There’s problems with that too. First the Spirit of God descending on Jephthah at the beginning of the passage in verse 29, is contrasted with his vow in verse 30 & 31. We know of Jephthah’s backstory, that he had non-Jewish pagan roots. A vow like this is more pagan than Jewish. And no where in the passage do we get a confirmation that it was because of the vow that the victory was won.
Instead, the passage seems to indicate that God had already secured the victory because he had given Jephthah his Spirit. But Jephthah wanted to secure it himself and vowed to offer a sacrifice. But this was him speaking hastily and out of ignorance and his old pagan ways. Therefore Jephthah’s joy in winning the battle, is broken with his sorrow at his own hasty vow.
This passage makes Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 really cut deep. Jesus says, “33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. (33-37)”
Jephthah’s vow was evil, because he was trying to win the victory on his own terms and it cost him his daughter. So later on in the Bible, we get a clear teaching to avoid such practices.
The final Bible contradiction that we’re going to cover today is temptation. The atheist website gives the passage of James 1:13, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.”
This passage from James is then contrasted with Genesis 22:1, “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham…”
These are obviously contradictory, because in the Genesis passage it clearly states that God tempted Abraham, but in the James passage, it says God cannot tempt.
But here’s the thing, the website is purposefully using the King James Version of the Bible. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m not going to condemn anyone that uses that version of the Bible. In fact if you want to memorize the Bible, the King James is probably the best one to memorize, because it is so poetic. But the problem with the King James is that is was translated just over 400 years ago. The English language has changed, and so a more modern English translation for our modern vernacular should be used when discussing contradictions.
Case in point, if you take the top four English translations, New International, New American Standard, English Standard, and even the New King James version, every single one of them translates Genesis 22:1 not as tempted Abraham, but rather tested him.
But what if they’re lying to try and cover up a contradiction? That’s when we ask, what does the Hebrew say? In Genesis 22:1, the Hebrew word is “nasah” (nawsaw), which means “to test or try someone”. In other words, the modern translations correctly translate the word tested. Back when the King James version was translated, they understood the difference the nuances of the word tempted, that we don’t pick up on today, and since language changes over time, we need more precise words to help us understand the meanings of words.
But what’s the difference between a testing of God and a temptation? Simply, God tests us to build us up in the faith, whereas the enemies of God tempt us to break relationship with him. Can we be tested and tempted at the same time? Yes, at the end of the book of Genesis the man Joseph said of his brothers selling him into slavery in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Temptation and testing can happen at the same time, producing wither righteous or unrighteous acts.
Those are three seeming contradictions that are presented from the Bible. Yet, when we take the time and think through them, we find that they’re not contradictions at all, but rather show how harmonious the Bible is. The Bible was written by 40+ men over the span of 1,500 years, and on three different continents, but all by one Spirit and one God.
The Bible’s cohesiveness should ground us further in our faith. But for people like Sampson, superficial contradictions can shake that ground. Isn’t interesting then that Jesus says, “24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. (Matthew 7:24-27)”
We too can easily fall into this mindset that God’s Word isn’t trust worthy. This is why it is so important to read the context, ask questions, and truly seek answers to our questions. I have yet to find a passage of Scripture that by diving into the context, or studying more, didn’t harmonize with the rest of Scripture. In fact, in the last year, my faith in the Bible’s cohesiveness has grown in leaps and bounds, because I have been studying the seeming contradictions of the Bible.
Marty Sampson seems to not have taken the time to dive into God’s Word to understand it. Let us not fall into that same trap. Let us instead bring our question and struggles before God, and seek him to teach us.
This week my challenge for you is simple, take the passages that we studied today, or others that you have heard of, and do your own research. Wrestle with God through the passages, and if you need a person to help, give me a call, text me, or come into the office, I would be glad to struggle through it with you.
Let us be the people of God, who like the Bereaians of the book of Acts (17:10-15) searched the Scriptures daily so that they would draw closer to God. Amen.
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